


Dickon

by Sandpipersummer



Category: Secret Garden - Burnett
Genre: M/M, secret garden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 02:44:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandpipersummer/pseuds/Sandpipersummer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dickon is on the cusp of manhood</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dickon

Dickon heard the hushed creak as the door of the hut opened and a presence slipped inside. He didn't turn around. Instead, quiet and still by the window, he concentrated on fixing a splint to the injured badger's leg. He could feel a heart beating quick under his fingers, and sense fear pulsing outwards from the small, brindled form.

'Tha's all reet', he whispered, and the door closed behind him.

*

Afterwards, lying in the rickety truckle bed that shepherds had used years past, it's itchy straw mattress digging into his back through the thin sheet, he wondered how this had come about. It had been like a dream walking amongst the trees, the voice beside him, or behind him, he weren't never too sure, only that he never rightly saw the speaker, just the rustling leaves of the trees as the presence hovered at the extremes of his vision.

'Badger,' he said. Young 'un, poorly leg, looks like. Bad tempered little thing, an' all.'

His eyes flicked round. He caught snatches of brown and green from whoever it was with him, just missing putting into focus the blurs and ripples of movement. Then all of a sudden it were behind him, and he could feel ancient strength gripping him by the shoulders, and the whispering touch of leaves on his skin.

'Watch out, he'll 'ave you.'

There was almost a laugh, but gentle; it didn't mock him and he knew, whatever strange thing was happening, that he was only a man just past boyhood and might know more than most but the woods and their inhabitants knew everything.

Dickon smiled and knelt down beside the injured animal. 'He won't hurt me, you see. He knows me.' He peered over his shoulder but the heaviness against his back was gone and in its place was air lighter than feathers, drifting upwards. And-- He made to move, but there was a sudden bittersweet smell that caught his nostrils and he hesitated. It couldn't be the badger, it were all wrong for an animal. The slightest gust of a breeze came from what seemed nowhere, moving the curls at the base of his neck, and he smelt it again, and remembered it from somewhere long ago. A different place. But the remembrance was gone as sudden as it had come and he was just himself again, crouching in woods he'd known his whole life, but which were a new place now, too.

He swallowed.

He'd seen animals rutting in the spring. It were summat natural, summat to be celebrated. But it were for-- And this was-- He got to his feet too sudden and the badger tried to move away; the first wrong-footing of his life.

He was careful after that, lifting it gently into his arms, ignoring the heat he felt all over his back, and the eyes he knew that were taking too much notice of him.

'He'll be all right now,' he said and tried to turn, wanting to get away, instead feeling fingers like young leaves on his neck, breath whispering through nearby branches and bringing life like he had never known it. He felt like he was doing something altogether different than walking through the trees back to his hut, the stranger he couldn't see keeping pace beside him, never too slow, never too fast.

*

He dozed, snuffling noises coming from the box in the corner, dry kisses peppering his chest and those fingers roaming all over him like they'd always known what they was doing.

'Thought you was asleep,' he murmured, and received a soft, vague laugh in reply.

Later still, with the sun dipping towards the horizon, twilight sighed its way into the woods. He felt sluggish, caught at the bottom of a vast ocean, fathoms deep, the sky a tiny speck a long way away. The bed shifted and he shivered with the feeling of being alone. He knew it was useless, but he peered through the gloom anyways, only to make out rustling leafy shadows as the door opened and his lover disappeared back into the trees.


End file.
